THE REPORT FROM WASHINGTON

The slaves of Justice Roger B. Taney

Ellis Washington is a former staff editor of the Michigan Law Review and law clerk at the Rutherford Institute. He is a professor of Constitutional Law, Legal Ethics, and Contracts at the National Paralegal College, a counselor at the American College of Education, and a founding board member of Salt and Light Global. Washington is a co-host of "Joshua's Trial," a radio show of Christian conservative thought. A graduate of John Marshall Law School and post-grad work at Harvard Law School, his latest law review article is titled, "Social Darwinism in Nazi Family and Inheritance Law." Washington’s latest book is a 2-volume collection of essays and Socratic dialogues – "The Progressive Revolution" (University Press of America, 2013). Visit his popular law/political blog, "EllisWashingtonReport.com, an essential repository dedicated to educating the next generation of young conservative intellectuals.

The pre-born baby has no rights that a woman and her gynecologist are bound to respect.

~ Ellis Washington, a paraphrase of Justice Taney (February 2012)

I remember the event like it was yesterday. It was the evening of Oct. 28, 2009, and my colleagues and I had just concluded a very important and successful two-day International Legal Conference on Freedom of Speech & Religion at the Congressional Auditorium in Washington, D.C., sponsored in part by my dear friend attorney Ann Fishman, founder and president of The Liberty Legal Project International. Before we all departed for home the next morning, several of the conference attendees were given a special surprise: Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who was one of our keynote speakers, treated us to a lovely dinner at the historic restaurant where for over 100 years our nation’s presidents, senators, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, lobbyists, media and all the power vanguard of Washington have eaten.

But that wasn’t the best part. Rep. Gohmert, whom I soon discovered was a walking encyclopedia on the history of Congress, graciously took us on a three and a half hour tour of every nook and crevice of the U.S. Capitol. I won’t bore you with all of the details, but it was indeed an epiphany experience for us all.

There was one room in that iconic building and one article of clothing I shall never forget.

This cavernous, mysterious room was the original chambers of the old U.S. Supreme Court. The clothing was the long black robe Justice Roger B. Taney – the same robe he wore in 1857 as chief justice and author of the most infamous case of the 19th century: Dred Scott v. Sandford, the case where Taney essentially wrote his declaration of war against his own country, a treasonous jurisprudence that would explode four years later into the catastrophe called the Civil War. This American Holocaust of carnage had over 600,000 casualties: North and South, free blacks and slaves, poor whites, the bourgeoisie and the wealthy … they all died as unwitting victims of Taney’s poison pen. They all died as slaves of Justice Roger B. Taney.

The full text of Taney’s statement from the Dred Scott ruling:

It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in regard to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted; but the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.

Taney’s Dred Scott majority opinion is considered by many historians to have indirectly been a cause of the Civil War. This meant that the U.S. Supreme Court believed that all people of African descent, whether or not they were slaves, when brought into the United States and held as slaves, were not protected by the Constitution and could never be U.S. citizens, in the same manner a cow, a goat, a pig or a jackass could never be a U.S. citizen.

Justice Taney, with evil intent, perpetrated an outrageous fraud upon the Supreme Court, upon America and against the U.S. Constitution. Taney began a diabolical brand of liberal activist jurisprudence that arrogantly ignored the Constitution, natural law, original intent and the doctrine stare decisis (judicial precedent) while arrogantly substituting their own liberal Democratic Party politics and later Social Darwinism, evolution, eugenics and Nietzsche’s ideas on Will to Power and Aristocracy Paradigm in place of the verity of the Constitution.

Returning back to our tour of Capitol Hill with Rep. Gohmert: The image I cannot get out of my mind is the little justice’s robe that hung on a mannequin in an anterior vestibule of the old Supreme Court deep inside the U.S. Capitol. As I towered over it at 6-foot-2 I queried to myself: How could such a man of the diminutive stature to fit this little robe cause such untold catastrophe to a nation by unleashing the destructive effects on the Constitution and race relations in society that still exist to this day?

President Lincoln famously said: “The states have no right to do evil.” Justice Taney may have been a good man, but he presided over Dred Scott v. Sandford, the most evil case in 19th century American jurisprudence. By so utterly perverting the Constitution, he negatively influenced subsequent generations. For example, Justice Owen J. Roberts (the “switch in time to save nine”), an activist justice who formerly voted against FDR’s New Deal programs as unconstitutional, suddenly began ruling in favor of them as constitutional beginning with the pivotal NLRB v. Laughlin Steel Corp. (1937) case.

Justice Taney’s liberal/progressive progeny can be found in the Warren Court (1953-69), which gave America Darwinian jurisprudence, ending racial segregation (without judicial precedent), separation of church and state, right of privacy, “penumbras” and “shadows.” The Burger Court (1969-86) not only did not reverse these unconstitutional rulings of the Warren Court as promised, but in fact extended many Warren Court doctrines including: expanding the legalizing of contraception beyond married couples to everyone, abortion, leading eventually to abortifacient drugs and mandatory sterilization, abolishing the death penalty (for four years) and almost legalizing homosexual sodomy.

Of course, the Warren Court and the Burger Court generally ignored or mocked stare decisis, the separation of powers doctrine, natural law and the original intent of the constitutional framers. Therefore, in this respect the Warren/Burger Courts, their leftist colleagues on the bench and the activist jurisprudence they perpetrated against America makes them essentially the children of Justice Taney and his infamous judicial legacy legalizing slavery.

There is no legal or moral difference between slavery and abortion. Both are evil.

My conclusion: Every step a Supreme Court justice takes away from the original intent of the constitutional framers, the Bible and natural law is a step a Supreme Court justice takes toward making all Americans (who are bounded to their decrees) the slaves of Justice Roger B. Taney!